The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Apocalypse, Or How To Train Your Human
by StoneandSilence
Summary: On the subject of Number Five, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy says: "Highly successful instrument of chaos. If he smiles at you, run. Can be neutralized with coffee." The crossover absolutely nobody asked for, where Five is an avatar of chaos and Dolores is an alien. Crack!fic
1. A Somewhat Complex Beginning

(I regret nothing.)

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy notes that the Hargreeves Siblings (AKA "The Umbrella Academy" AKA "The Most Dysfunctional Group Of Superheros Ever To Market Their Own Line Of Breakfast Cereals") were the sole reason Earth's entry into the encyclopedia was updated from "harmless" to "mostly harmless" and furthermore that the human creature designated "Number Five" (AKA "The Boy", AKA "Mister Five") was the twelfth deadliest assassin in the universe among carbon-based, bipedal lifeforms in possession of three arms or less. This made him something of a minor celebrity in certain circles that paid attention to that sort of thing, and not only because they all thought it was terribly cool that he didn't have a proper name.

More than anything it was Number Five's repeated attempts to shank reality itself which really impressed the pale, awkward beings that gathered in basements all over the universe to discuss things like their favorite temporal assassins and which of them would win in a death match if armed only with a cheese grater. For you see after a time-traveling mishap (which wasn't nearly as uncommon in that sector of the galaxy as one might think) Number Five found himself stranded in the not-to-distant future where an apocalypse had somewhat unfortunately wiped out humankind. (It should be noted that this was really only unfortunate to Number Five, as the rest of the universe was largely uncaring and the other humans who would have cared were already vaporized.) His ensuing efforts to reverse time and stop the apocalypse were akin to trying to shiv the space-time continuum into compliance and provided a great deal of entertainment to anyone not on the receiving end of the not-always-metaphorical karmic knife.

On the subject of Number Five, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy says: "Highly successful instrument of chaos. If he smiles at you, run. Can be neutralized with coffee." There was an addendum that briefly detailed Number Five's ability to warp (mostly) at-will through time and space but an editor at the publishing houses on Ursa Minor accidentally linked it as a cross-reference to the TARDIS and caused a minor temporal anomaly that nearly annihilated half their database and caused a perfectly ordinary cappuccino machine to gain sentience. The passage was deleted to prevent any further incidents.

Now the real problem with being an instrument of chaos is that chaos rarely accepts input from it's instruments as to how and where they will be deployed, much as the violinist does not ask the violin if it feels like being played that particular day (though violinists everywhere might see a marked improvement in their playing if they did). And thus Number Five, who emphatically did _not_ wish to be stuck in the apocalyptic future and miss out on great historical highlights such as war, Jeff Goldblum and the rise of personal home shopping, found himself exactly there, with no way to get back because chaos had a very quirky sense of humor which meant Number Five could travel through time right until the moment he really needed to.

Unable to tolerate being the punchline of such a bad cosmic joke, Five immediately set about attempting to travel into the past, a pursuit which would take him a very long time indeed. He was aided in this endeavor by his companion D'Olo0rz (AKA "Dolores" AKA "Delores"), a hyper-intelligent, nebulous alien consciousness that had been stranded on earth when it's spaceship was destroyed in the apocalypse and who took refuge in the severed torso of a department store mannequin until it could find an alternate means of transport off the planet. Number Five unwittingly pack bonded with D'Olo0rz when he attempted to use the mannequin's blouse as a handkerchief and thereby initiated the ancient courting ritual of D'Olo0rz' home world. D'Olo0rz, unlikely to receive a better offer, accepted.

On the subject of The D'Olo0rz Conscious, the Hitchhiker's Guide says: "Nimble little space vixen out for a good time. Fond of Bordeaux and sequins." What the Guide fails to mention is that D'Olo0rz' lack of corporeal form required that it occupy a host at all times, and while the human's body was a good deal spongier and more breakable than the mannequin, it was superior in that it's race possessed a rudimentary nervous system and was in the beginning evolutionary stages of consciousness; somewhere between having mastered firearms but not turn signals. Best of all it could travel through time, if given proper instruction.

D'Olo0rz understood the human's mind was much too fetal and underdeveloped to comprehend the complex quantum equations necessary to transport even one (let alone two) beings into the past, and was therefore obliged to spoon feed Number Five the information a bit at a time, least his squishy human brain hemorrhage under the strain. It took slightly longer than D'Olo0rz had hoped to transfer all the necessary information; about forty-five years, give or take. By this time the effort of retaining such mindbogglingly variegated concepts and equations as well as the mental load of sharing his brain with an alien consciousness had caused Five to undergo more than one psychotic episode and left him in a condition that many academics in the field of psychology commonly refer to as 'bug-eyed nuts'.

Such was his condition when he was approached by a strange woman in a black coat and quite abruptly offered a job, which lasted longer than one might think and ended about as well as one might expect when employing a high-functioning lunatic who just happens to be the living avatar for universal chaos as a hitman.


	2. The Middle Bit

Conventional wisdom has long held that anytime something comes in a set of three, it's always the middle bit that's most likely to be rubbish. This universal truth can be seen in everything from movie trilogies to children, and eventually led the Hingligee race of the planet K'lorporti to do away with the concept entirely, which worked quite well until it came to the sticky subject of bridges. (After a heated and protracted meeting of the Hingligee parliament, it was eventually decided that rather than renounce the scientific paradigms of the age and add a middle section to the bridges, they would simply ban rivers.)

On the subject of the Hingligee the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says nothing at all, because the entire planet of K'lorporti was obliterated eons ago when they left the middle out of their new super-sized particle accelerator and switched it on.

In any case, as the middle is where we now find ourselves the narrator resolves to do their utmost to prevent it going to shit; a predicament mirrored by the subject of our observation, Number Five, who found himself both toward the end of his life and in the middle of it, because time travel is a complicated business that can have any number of bizarre and far-reaching temporal side effects such as becoming one's own grandfather, erasing oneself from the timeline or kick-starting the industrial revolution a hundred years too early by accidentally inventing processed cheese.

Now the reader may remember the side effect of Number Five's own experiments with time travel had him stranded for forty years or so in a post-apocalyptic future devoid of life save for an incorporeal alien presence named D'Olo0rz which had taken up residence in his brain and was subsequently driving him mad while attempting to manipulate quantum physics enough to get them both home. It was therefore a perfectly understandable reaction that upon being confronted by a mysterious woman in black (who in the manner of mysterious black-clad women everywhere was certain to make his life far more complicated and perilous than it currently was), he tried to shoot her.

Conventional wisdom also argues against attempting to shoot prospective employers who aren't confirmed Multi-Level-Marketing representatives, but fortunately for both Number Five and our mystery woman (who it turns out was called The Handler because absolutely no one in this story is allowed a reasonable name) his penchant for shooting at people he'd only just met was precisely the reason she'd come in search of him.

On the subject of The Handler (AKA, ****REDACTED****), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says: "Regional director of Temps Aeternalis corrections division. Head bitch in charge. If you see her you're about to die or be recruited, either way you're screwed." A small footnote link then takes the reader to the Guide's main entry for the Temps Aeternalis, (AKA "Temps Commission" AKA "The Real Reason Your Uncle Randolph Got That Safe Dropped On His Head") and from there goes on to describe the Aeternalis as an organization of self-appointed 'protectors' of the infinite number of timelines found across the universe, of which they believe it their job to monitor and, when necessary, take steps of a generally homicidal nature to preserve. The Guide goes on to declare this all a lot of bollocks, as the universe has it's own methods of temporal correction which it has been employing for a mindbogglingly unfathomably long time and had the situation well in hand long before a group of ape-like organisms with delusions of grandeur decided to stick their decidedly ape-like feet into things.

Regardless, it soon came to pass that the universe's foremost instrument of chaos was employed by the very organization whose raison d'être was attempting to eradicate chaos throughout every known point in space and time; a career at which he was almost suspiciously adept.

At this juncture it seems only fair to point out that on the subject of chaos the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says: "An unpredictable cosmic prankster comprised of formless matter that existed before the creation of the universe. Loves a good joke. Particularly fond of butterflies and meringue." This last part is no great surprise to anyone who has actually attempted to make a consistently good meringue twice in a row.)

In any case, we shall now return to the other pivotal character in our story, D'Olo0rz, who was not at all happy to have spent the last forty years drunk, stranded, and carefully manipulating it's vessels thoughts only to have them get distracted in the home stretch by a bit of temporal murder. As such it took the first opportunity to remind Number Five that while traveling in time shooting people for fun and profit was all well and good, they had slightly more pressing concerns of the world-ending variety to attend to.

Unfortunately it was perhaps a side effect of spending nearly forty years drunker than the lemon at the bottom of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster that the calculations for the time dilation were off by about the same amount, and thus when Number Five finally completed the universal equation for time travel and was able to open a wormhole to the past his consciousness was unceremoniously transposed into the body of his thirteen year old self which, rather appropriately, traditionally marks the beginning of the most chaotic years of a human's life.

On the subject of being thirteen, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says: "Ugh." Both concise and eloquent, it is often quoted as the definitive word on the matter.

And so it was that Number Five, highly successful instrument of chaos, full-time lunatic, daytime drunk and the twelfth deadliest assassin in the universe (among carbon-based, bipedal lifeforms possessing three arms or less) was no longer tall enough to reach the top of the refrigerator, and had a bedtime of 10pm on weekdays.


	3. The Middle Middle Bit

Well, it is now painfully clear that the narrator was a shameless liar when they pronounced the previous chapter as the middle bit, and whose own authorial 'walk of shame' will now involve going back to change the chapter numbers in this story from a definitive '3' to 'oh...whatever'. This is an error for which they refuse to apologize as this is just the sort of thing that happens when one attempts to document the inner workings of chaos and it's various instruments and you should accept it. (They did however offer up a stream of colorful expletives upon realizing they were not, in fact, 'nearly there'.)

On the subject of profanity, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy cannot be quoted at this time. Partially because it would take too long, what with there being an impressive list of obscenities in all the common languages spoken throughout the galaxy all cross-referenced to each other by severity, but also because there may be children reading. Shame on you.

What can be said however is that the guide points out a very interesting linguistic quirk; mainly that while every civilization had obscenities unique to their own cultural or biological origins (many of which make no sense without a decent understanding of both) nearly all of them possess at least one four letter word for excrement that is considered a particularly harsh imprecation. It is the human version of this obscenity that Number Five uttered upon finding himself falling out of the sky in front of his long-lost, somewhat confused family and in possession of his thirteen year old body.

Being of a practical mind, the first thing he did was make a sandwich because it's really no good trying to stop the apocalypse on an empty stomach. Being more than a little deranged, he chose peanut butter and marshmallows. We mention this small detail because it perfectly illustrates the curious mixture of steady practicality and sheer lunacy that was a key aspect of Number Five's personality, much to the chagrin and probable misfortune of everyone around him.

For the aforementioned family he had not seen in nearly twenty years he had only a few brief words, and as impartial observers to the story we must conclude that is probably for the best. They weren't a bad sort, but they were far from reliable, being to varying degrees dysfunctional, juvenile, petty and emotionally stunted. In other words, they were the former child stars of what in the common vernacular is referred to as a stereotypical 'stage mom'. (That the mother in question was their father and they were pushed to overachievement in the area of superheroism as opposed to acting or beauty pageants is a minor detail.)

Having thus sated his own rather curious palate it was then time to see to the care and feeding of D'Olo0rz, who had far superior taste in food and drink than himself and who had in its various travels picked up an affinity for strong black coffee. This being something of a scarcity in the post-apocalyptic future, D'Olo0rz wasted no time in directing its host to the nearest shop and was just about to enjoy the first decent coffee it'd had in almost fifty years when they were interrupted by a large group of large men with large guns who had come on behalf of the Temps Aterenalis to remind Number Five that he had left without saying goodbye or handing in his uniform.

D'Olo0rz' pert response can be appreciated by anyone who's been interrupted by a belligerent coworker early in the morning just as they're about to partake of their first cuppa. It was by all accounts a lively if somewhat unproductive discussion, with a good deal of fun being had on all sides but no real resolution being reached.

That minor disagreement sorted, Number Five undertook his somewhat obsessive pastime of attempting to alter the timeline through varying degrees of violence for which he eventually earned his universal reputation as a highly successful, fairly entertaining instrument of chaos. (Somewhat anticlimactically, this mostly seemed to involve sitting broodingly in a van staring at a building while muttering to himself about the end times. Consider that next time you feel like making fun of your local corner-street eccentric.) In this endeavor he was nominally assisted by his brother Klaus, who was himself a slightly less successful but perhaps even more entertaining instrument of chaos owing mainly to the fact that while his chaotic streak was quite impressive, it mostly only effected himself.

On the subject of Klaus Hargreeves the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says: "Pretty but hopeless. A complete dumpster fire; do not approach. Talks to dead people, no really." It is impossible to know chaos well enough to make any sort of assumption as to how it feels about anything, but given Klaus had not yet died by his own frenetic and rather confused hand (not permanently anyway), the narrator thinks it reasonable to assume he was viewed as something of a personal favorite. Like a shaggy, poorly socialized but nevertheless lovable dog that utterly fails at taking instruction and keeps running into walls.

It should be noted at this time that Number Five's former employers at the Temps Aterenalis Commission, having considered the breakdown in negotiations at the doughnut shop decided to employ a slightly more aggressive method of mediation and sent their two best temporal assassins, Hazel and Cha-Cha, to find their erstwhile employee and deliver a list of grievances of the small, round and metallic kind. Thus everything to this point seemed to be going exactly to chaos' confounding and unknowable cosmic schedule (if it can be assumed to have one at all), the endgame of which we can only guess at.


	4. The Bit to the Right of the Middle

On the subject of Hazel and Cha-Cha (AKA "The Murder Puppies"), the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says: "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!", followed by a few odd gurgling noises. This brief transcript was copied verbatim from a small audio recorder found in the stomach of a Snarlick whale on the planet Coruune and represents the whole of the first and last encounter between the Temps Aterenalis' second best assassins and the unfortunate Hitchhiker's Guide field researcher who had been sent to do an exposé on them.

The guide then goes on to note that Hazel and Cha-Cha were themselves both highly respected members of their profession, with Hazel holding a commendable rank of seventeenth most deadly assassin in the universe (among carbon-based, bipedal lifeforms in possession of three arms or less) and an impressive number four in the sub-category of facial hair. Cha-Cha meanwhile was in the curious position of being number eight in her classification, but this achievement was somewhat diminished due to the fact that in the whole of the universe there were only nine other assassins matching her biological properties, being neither carbon-based nor inherently bipedal.

The inevitable show-down between the deadly duo and the infamous Number Five was much talked about among the sort of beings whose pastimes included wearing a good deal of black, attempting to cultivate an air of mystery and subscribing to the "Assassin's Monthly" bi-weekly newsletter. Indeed the interest garnered caused such a temporary spike in tourism to the usually dull, painfully backwards planet of Sol 3 in the Milky Way galaxy That Ryan's Hyperspace Taxi Service began offering a direct route. (This was an abysmal failure due to the fact that no one involved in the decision had considered that the only beings eager enough to pay taxi fare to Earth to watch three of the universe's top twenty assassins have a go at each other weren't the sort to have enough money for a hyperspace taxi in the first place.)

Hazel and Cha-Cha themselves, having utterly failed to find Number Five despite the later's complete lack of subtly contented themselves with breaking into his house, attempting to murder his family, taking his brother Klaus hostage and finally burning down a wholly unsuspecting medical building. For his part Number Five responded to these various grievances against his person by buggering off to the library and getting completely smashed on cheap earth liquor while leaving someone else to bother with the details.

Klaus meanwhile having haphazardly escaped the clutches of two of the universes most deadly assassins encountered his own time-traveling mishap when he was transported via magical suitcase to an era in time several decades before he was born, where he was finally able to find some peace and quiet due to the fact that while he had been dumped into the middle of one of twentieth century earth's bloodiest and most infamous conflicts, it was absolutely nothing compared to Hargreeve's Family Game Night. (We should like to say here that he lived happily ever after, but in reality he only lived happily for about ten months or so, which was in itself a new record.)

Onward.

Number Five, having regained a modicum of sobriety and not yet ready to call a draw in his no-holds-barred brawl with the universe next enlisted the help of his brother Luther in cutting out the homicidal middle-men and contacting Temps Aeternalis directly. What he hoped to achieve by this is somewhat unclear, but thus is the result of making such monumental decisions about the fate of the world while nursing a dreadful hangover.

D'Olo0rz, ever the lone voice of reason, cautioned him against seeking out the all-powerful organization that was attempting to kill him and had various assassins in it's employ. This was partially because D'Olo0rz had grown rather fond of the human over the course of their adventures together but mostly because they were sharing the same body and it was acutely susceptible to damage via bullet holes. Number Five, highly successful instrument of chaos and therefore the sort who never met a conflict he didn't like to immediately escalate, politely declined their advice.

It is often said that the universe works in mysterious ways, though in reality the ways are probably not all that mysterious to the universe itself and only appear so to those who aren't in the know. Likewise, some people might think it strange that Number Five's meeting with The Handler ended not with him dying, injured, or fed to a Snarlick whale but rather being promoted to a position of middle management within the Temps Commission's internal bureaucracy. However this is only confusing to those who've never had the misfortune of working in middle management before. (No doubt those who have would rather take their chances with the whale.)

On the subject of Snarlick whales The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says: "Large, toothy, football shaped meat-eaters that reside in the shallow oceans of the resort planet Coruune and are known to devour entire families in one go. One of the most endangered species in the galaxy due to their propensity to eat each other." This has no real bearing on anything in the story but it's a good thing to know next time you're visiting Coruune and your drunk friends decide to go skinny-dipping.

And so we leave Number Five back at work for the sinister and marginally competent Temps Aeternalis Commission and their somewhat incomprehensible goal of controlling the universes' timelines via murder. What fate awaits these somewhat hapless players in the great game is yet unknown, and which shall surely be revealed in future chapters.


	5. The Bit Right Before the End

On the unremarkable planet of Sol 3 (AKA "Earth") where our story takes place there is an unremarkable doughnut shop on an unremarkable street, run by an unremarkable woman named Agnes who had the unremarkable pastime of bird watching. It is important to know just how unremarkable Agnes was because it illustrates a rather important point of our narrative, which is that at one time or another nearly every being in the universe will be either a punchline to one of chaos' jokes or its means of delivery (and sometimes, as in the manner of politicians, they are both at once).

For example, Agnes had led her entire, unremarkable life being largely overlooked by the great cosmic Powers That Be. But one week from the day she performed the wholly unremarkable task of serving a single cup of black coffee to a rather unremarkable looking boy she was to find herself in a vacation lodge at Rain Quail just south of Wadsworth bird sanctuary, tied to a chair and dangling over a tub of frothing hot water whilst her newly acquired time-traveling, assassin paramour fought for both their lives against his murderous ex-partner.

If such are the perils that arise from serving coffee to an avatar of chaos, imagine what happens when you have one working for you.

Such was the predicament of the Temps Aeternalis Commission, that self-same organization who after repeatedly trying to kill Number Five decided to re-hire him instead. Whether they realized it or not the Temps Commission was engaged in a cosmic game of whack-a-mole with chaos itself due to their stubborn insistence in involving themselves in the timeline under the rather misguided belief that they were somehow responsible for making certain that everything that was supposed to happen should, and that anything that shouldn't happen didn't, and that the best way to achieve both these goals was to carefully monitor the most chaotic element in existence and, when necessary, take drastic steps to curtail it.

It is a demonstrable fact that there is no force in the universe more chaotic than unfettered free will.

Thus the Temps Aeternalis spent its days either scouring the timeline for potential trouble makers and eliminating them, or orchestrating overly complicated methods of making sure all major historical events went off without a hitch and ruining all chaos' fun. But one should be very careful when attempting to wrestle control of such elemental forces of the universe, because on the whole the universe doesn't much like being wrestled control of and tends to have a sharp rebuke ready for anyone who tries. The rebuke in this particular instance came in the form of the universe's twelfth deadliest assassin (among carbon-based, bipedal lifeforms possessing three arms or less) with a penchant for mass destruction loose in Commission headquarters.

As one might imagine, it did not take chaos long to make it's presence known. Number Five had worked there for slightly less than six hours when - in a rather impressive display of chaotic energy - he stole some sensitive information vital to the apocalypse, destroyed the Commission's entire internal messaging system, obliterated the devices their assassins used to move through time and handed his boss a heartfelt resignation letter in the form of a live grenade. Having made it's point chaos then transported Number Five back to the beginning of the day, dropping him off at a pivotal moment in the morning and thus erasing a timeline where everything was just starting to go well for everyone because after all where was the fun in all that.

As a result of this shift in the timeline his brother Diego was arrested for murder, his sister Vanya was taken to a cabin in the woods by a deranged killer, his other sister Allison followed her alone, his other brother Luther was mistaken for a furry and his other, other brother Klaus briefly died again. Suffice to say no one was having a very good day including Number Five, who nearly bled to death from a shrapnel wound because it turns out suffering in stoic silence is not nearly as heroic as they make it out to be in the movies and is actually a rather stupid thing to do. Incidental chaotic shockwaves included three deaths, the dissolution of a longtime partnership into mutually assured destruction, the annihilation of Agnes' doughnut shop, a fallen meringue and a terrible traffic jam on the I-46 highway towards the Wadsworth bird sanctuary.

On the subject of traffic jams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says: "One of chaos' favorite cosmic pranks due to their far-reaching and unpredictable consequences. Loathed by everyone throughout the universe because they are never encountered unless one hasn't the time for it." This point can be perfectly illustrated by the fact that on the day of this particular traffic jam the world was going to be ending in less than forty-eight hours and thus absolutely nobody on the planet had any time for it at all.

The end result of all this chaos is that Vanya Hargreeves, seventh sibling and eternal wallflower, found herself at an isolated cabin in the deep woods in the company of a criminally insane lunatic. Given the nature of her family, she was not quite as troubled by this situation as she likely should have been and in fact was rather enjoying the company. The good news is that this ordeal did not end with Vanya being stuffed into a freezer as one might suppose but rather with her unlocking her true potential as chaos' pièce de résistance. The bad news is that the world ended shortly afterwards and it wasn't even Thursday.


	6. And Now, The Weather

At this time we must turn our attention away from our subject of interest, Number Five, in order to examine is sister Vanya, who holds a special place in our story, much as a brick holds a special place in the story of the window it just smashed.

An outdated version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy describes Vanya Hargreeves as "Average, slight, and ordinary." Her hair is listed as "hair colored" and her eyes "unimportant". However the updated entry into the new guide scheduled to go on sale next quarter has a bit more to say, stating "Ultimate f***ing instrument of chaos, The Big One, absolutely do_ not_ f**k with this f***ing woman you have no idea, holy sh*t." (Censoring courtesy of the narrator.)

This is because Vanya Hargreeves, the most unremarkable being in three star systems (more unremarkable even than Miss Agnes Griddy of the now lamentably incinerated doughnut shop) was revealed this whole time to be chaos' hidden champion, possessed of immense and nigh uncontrollable power which, in a series of events we will explore directly, she used to utterly destroy all life on earth after being rudely interrupted during a musical solo (a feeling performers everywhere shall certainly be able to relate to).

In order to better understand the advent of this highly improbable scenario we must begin with Sir Reginald Hargreeves himself, a by all accounts rather unpleasant fellow of indeterminate origin and questionable morals who's favored pastimes included aviation, child trafficking, vigilantism and kicking puppies*. Reginald Hargreeves had a dream, or at least an idea, and it wasn't a very good idea but he went ahead with it anyway because he was old and rich and rich old men tend to do as they please with very little forethought or consideration as to how it puts others out.

Reginald Hargreeves decided to have children.

Not just any children of course, and certainly not his own as that would require he be desirable to someone. Instead he did what any wealthy being does when they'd rather not bother with the details and spent a lot of money very fast in order to purchase his children wholesale, acquiring them as newborns in mint condition before they aged up and lost market value. Now it should be noted that these were not regular children at all, but very special children with very special abilities, abilities he liked to make little notes about in dusty leather journals because cultivating an air of studiousness was an important aspect of any man who wore a monocle, else people might laugh at him for it.

On the subject of monocles, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says, "What's the bloody point, go buy a pair of glasses you pretentious wanker."

Regardless in due course Sir Reginald Hargreeves had possession seven magic children, which was the perfect start to a traveling theater group but he pushed them into crime fighting instead and the universe has been a lesser place for it ever since. To facilitate this rather hair-brained schemed he employed a variety of methods of instruction and training, most of which seemed to involve locking the children in various small, dark places and leaving them there for extended periods of time. (Surprisingly this did not have quite the desired effect and rather than become superheros when they grew up the Hargreeves siblings had several psychoses named after them instead.)

Now Hargreeves senior was a very educated man. This means he knew a great many things about a wide variety of topics, unfortunately none of which had anything to do with children, life, or practical matters such as the quickest way to get downtown during rush hour or how to tie his shoes. Predictably, this led to a rather bad habit of leaving out critical bits of his children's education. For example, while he taught them a good deal about things like target practice and how to incapacitate an enemy with a paper clip, his instruction was a touch limited on subjects like relationships; an oversight that ultimately ended with two of the seven siblings falling in love with each other, another life partnered to a mannequin and Vanya deciding her ideal match was a lunatic murderer living under an assumed name who's hobbies included petty theft, wood carving and patricide. As one might suspect, this was not the most stable of conditions for discovering one's long-dormant talent of being able to smite people via sound wave. (It should be noted here that Vanya herself had no knowledge of this power, as it's existence was one of those things Sir Reginald Hargreeves decided not to mention to anyone.)

Moving on

It is a universal rule that all siblings fight, the sole exception being siblings born on the planet Xerra 3, because the population of Xerra 3 consists of a single vast organism which stretches almost the entire circumference of the planet and who procreates by splitting it's consciousness via osmosis, and therefore any physical confrontations merely result in the creature engaged in a fistfight with itself. (Historians are 98 percent certain Xerra 3 was the origin point of the universally recognized phrase, "stop hitting yourself"). We mention this because it is important to understand that when Allison and her sister got into an argument over Vanya's somewhat questionable taste in men, it was a fairly routine sort of sibling disagreement and she had absolutely no reason to believe it would end with her nearly dying. Chaos, hard at work behind the scenes, had other ideas.

Due to this unfortunate outcome Vanya once again found herself locked in a small, dark space by her family because common sense was another one of those things that Sir Reginald Hargreeves decided was beneath him and didn't bother passing on to his children. She retaliated by using her newfound, near limitless power to blow the small dark space to smithereens, followed by the house, the surrounding neighborhood and most of her wits. She then popped off to change for a very important violin concerto because family drama aside, it's terribly rude to keep ones audience waiting. Her siblings, undaunted by failure and in possession of more enthusiasm than wisdom, went after her with very little thought given as to what they would do when they got there.

We shall not embarrass the Hargreeves children by going into the details of that final confrontation, as anyone who wants an accounting of them can simply purchase a copy of Ulog Zolprender's anthology "1001 Top Galactic Screw Ups" and read the relevant chapters. Suffice to say it did not end well for anyone living on planet Earth at the time, and the poor moon took it in the shorts too.

If there is an underlying theme to the various narrative threads found in this story, it is that chaos must be in possession of a sublime sense of cosmic irony, as it had been through every character's attempts to prevent disaster that ultimately caused them to fall victim to it. Hargreeves' efforts to repress his adopted daughters' chaotic power led to it being unleashed in it's most deadly form, the Temps Aeternalis' struggle to control free will caused their best agents to all go rogue and threw the entire organization into complete disarray, our nominal heroes through their own actions were the very cause of the apocalypse they were attempting to prevent, and Number Five, highly successful instrument of chaos and twelfth deadliest assassin in the universe (among carbon-based, bipedal lifeforms in possession of three arms or less) was faced with the fact that his entire life and all of it's struggles therein had been nothing more than the slow build-up to an inevitable and spectacularly destructive punchline.

Chaos, wherever it was to be found, was surely laughing uproariously over the whole spectacle.

And yet, all was not lost. D'Olor0z, still embedded deep in Number Five's limbic system, casually reminded their stupefied host that he had spent the better part of fifty years being carefully trained in the science of traveling into the past, and what was the point of nearly having his brain melted by quantum physics if he wasn't going to use it? Number Five, who really was a bit cracked, insisted on taking his entire family with him despite the fact it required a number of hasty, last minute calculations on D'Olor0z' part least they all be torn apart at the atomic level, and wouldn't that put a damper on everyone's day.

Setting coordinates for the nearest coffee shop because they were definitely going to need a very strong cuppa after all this, D'Olor0z fed the information into their vessel's mind and the whole barmy lot of them disappeared in a flash of blue light that would have been very impressive to any bystanders, were they not busy being incinerated at the time.

If it seems at the end of it all the net gain of this cosmic practical joke was that Temps Aeternalis got exactly what they'd wanted all along in the destruction of the earth and all that came of their attempts to wrangle control of elemental chaos was inconvenience to themselves, well. Perhaps there is a lesson there to be learned about simply letting things take their course and trusting that even if the universe doesn't seem to know what it's doing, it's a fair cop to say it has a far better idea of what it's about than any of the rest of us.

Then again, Number Five and his siblings are still out there together somewhere - or rather, somewhen - determined to change the course of history, their butterfly wings undoubtedly stirring up endless trouble and unforeseen consequences throughout the galaxy so perhaps this is not the end after all, but merely an intermission of sorts. A well-timed pause before the encore.

We shall see.

*_citation needed _


End file.
